Phatasy Star Online: Shattered Nirvana
by Squall Lonerise
Summary: Explore the story of a teen and his friends as they battle to uncover the secrets of a conspiracy that will forever effect their lives, and the lives of all abord Pioneer 2....
1. Sunrise

**PHANTASY STAR ONLINE**

**SHATTERED NIRVANA**

Fanfiction by Squall

Original copyright: SONICTEAM/SEGA, 2000, 2002

(Sean, Sarah, David and the unknown Android are my characters. I own those, but not the game this story is based off of, nor do I own anything derived from that game)

**CHAPTER 1**

**Sunrise**

The first thing he could see was a bright light in his eyes....

"Dang.....must've overslept." He said, tilting over to his right to face west, away from the light source. He felt himself falling and as he hit the ground, he realized that he had been in a tree all night long.....a fact that he was now starting to remember. he heard rustling in the brush beside him, and whirled about to face what ever was there, brandishing his cane dangerously in front of him. A small yellow chicken-like bird reveiled itself to him, completely unconcerned about the cane in his hands. It inclined its head at an odd angle to peer at him with black eyes, then chirped before begining to bend down and begin eating some kind of mushroom next to it, concidering him as no threat to itself. "....at least it isn't like some of the larger ones....." he said, checking his watch to see the time....7:45 AM, the watch read.

"I had better get moving, those jerks could show up any minute." he said to himself, remebering what had happened just hours before......

* * *

"GET HIM!! DON'T LET HIM GET AWAY!" Someone shouted behind him as he ran from several Armor clad sorldiers, pursuing him. He had managed to escape from them after they had attacked he and a couple of friends of his, as they were hanging out in one of the few areas on the surface of Ragol that the public was allowed to go to. They had split in several directions to throw off the pursuers, planning to meet back at the Teleport Station that lead to the ship once they had thrown of the pursuers.......He wasn't sure how the others were doing, but he heard several shouts and paniced voices from some of the attackers from something one of his friends, Sarah, had done...she was a Hunter in training, so she had some skill with weapons. She had probably ambushed them.

He saw something to his right, and he ducked as he ran, right under an outstreached android arm, _Probably one of our 'friends"....._ he thought sourly as he ran, already weaving around another person, this time a titanic titan of a Human Hunter, as tall as a mech (well, not really) who had showed themself by stepping in what they thought was his way......he mearly weaved around the human male who was too tall to reach him in time, as the Hunter discovered to his dismay as he lunged for his target, and his head whent into the branches of the pine tree the target had run under, the pineneedles slashing at his face and eyes....."HOLY FART!" the man shouted as he pulled back quickly to avoid flaying his face.

Their target whirled around and taunted them. "Oh, too bad! Maybe next time!" he shouted at them and spun around to run from them, into the wild growth of bushes and trees.....and right into a box....

"Wha-?! Whats that doing here!?" he said. He looked to see if they had seen where he had gone....they were looking in a bush several meters away....

He shrugged and opened the box. A cane of some sort, with the head of it pulsating a green color as it glowed. He grabbed the cane, then he saw another box, he opened that one too, finding a small beam pistol. He took that as well, but pocketed it, not wanting to use it unless he had no choice.....for example, something like what he had heard about being in the depths of the planet from overhearing conversations between Hunters and others....such as a Delsaber.....He had seen pictures of those things....and had seen a Hunter who wielded its left and right arms as a Shield and Saber...."Wasn't that guy named Adus?....yeah, I think that was it..." he said, as he sat for a moment, before one of the pursuers found him.............

A metal face with glowing, yellow eyes was staring right at him through the branches of a short tree. "I found y-" the android said before meeting the glowing end of his new cane, stunning it long enough for him to run.

He kept running until he could run no longer, then he had scrabbled up a large tree as fast as he could and hid in the upper branches, soon failing to remain awake and falling asleep.

* * *

He cleared the memory from his vision and began to attempt to find out where the blazes he was.....

He looked around to try to figure out if there was anything nearby that he could use as a landmark. He saw a wall with a tree just next to it. He climbed the tree and lept over the wall........landing right next to Sarah and David, suprising the heck out of them both. They both spun to face him, weapons they had found readied to attack if need be. "It's just me, you two....Nice weps guys." he said. "Where were you, Sean?" Sarah asked him. "Just having fun with our mutual 'friends'......what about you two?" he replyed. "Pretty much the same with me." Sarah said, "Yeah, same here too." David said.

"We found a Teleport Station nearby....we should get back to the ship now......we have been missing all night long." Sarah said, pointing just beyond a door to their north. "Good idea, lets get moving." Sean said.

They went through the door as it opened.....finding that they had company......

"Isn't that...!?" Sean asked. "Yeah.....it is...." David said, as they saw who was already there.......a red and white Android of unknown model....something never before seen on the Pioneer 2 or on Ragol............the same one they had seen just yesterday, right before their pursuers had come.......

"Targets verified, comencing hostilities." the android said in a female voice. Two energy blade were activated, coming out of its hands. "holy......fart!" the three humans said as one.

They readied their weapons, and got into battle stances as they saw the android aproach them, pause before them..........then leap clear over them and disappear through the door they had come through.........they stood and stared for a moment, then..as the shock of what had happened faded, they ran for the Teleport Station without further incident and used it to return to the ship.......

The light of the warp field engulfed them and they disappeared, already having arrived on the Pioneer 2 by the time to light began to fade..........


	2. Just another day aboard Pioneer 2

**(I don't own PSO or any characters created by SonicTeam, just my own characters)**

**CHAPTER 2**

**Just another day aboard the Pioneer 2...**

**And a home invasion**

As soon as the golden light of the Teleport Stations energies faded, the three youths found themselves surrounded by worried parents. Sarah's father was already barking orders to the soldiers under his command to find whoever had done this to them. David's large family was surrounding him and overwhelming him with hugs and other gestures of affection. Sean's mother and aunt were hugging him. A battle ragged Squall (HUmar, REDRIA) came up through the telepipe line just moments later, rushing straight for the youths and began asking the excitedly about how they had made it through the forest surrounding the Central Dome without any sort of guides, while at the same time, inspecting their newfound weapons and ogling over the Agito that Sarah had found.

After a while, the three families split up, each heading on their way to their respective homes.

"See you later, Sean." Sarah said to him, before she and her father left for their own home.

"So, Squall.....you were trying to find us?" Sean asked the worn Hunter. "Yeah...all three of ya......but I kept getting hung up by some kind of new group......they just kept getting in my way......and then, there was this android-" Squall began to say before being interrupted on the word Android. "Android!? Was it red and white, with nasty looking blades coming out of it's hands?" Sean asked quickly.

Squall looked at the young human with a quizzical look on his face.......

"Yeah.......it was........why?" Squall said, knowing he was treading lethal ground by saying this..........he knew about something pertaining to this....but it was dangerous to even speak of a slight bit of it......there had been....disappearances..... since before he had found out about it.....that was what alerted him to the fact of something being up....

"We saw it." Sean said simply and plainly. "Tell me when we get to where were going........" Squall said to him as he gave a signal to Sean's aunt, who readied her customized WALS-MK2, in a distinctive green color, as opposed to its normal ruddy hue...his mother drew out a Battle Verge.....Squall reached into his pocket, but did not pull his hand out......they continued to walk toward Sean' family's house....

They managed to arrive without incident....but that night.....

As they were waiting for the news to end, a noise erupted from Sean's room.....Squall's MAG, Bhirava, began making screeching sounds...panicking. Sean, more of felt than saw, a photn bolt of hard light shoot past his head, as the heat of it washed over him....He cursed, and on instinct, grabbed his cane from next to him. He felt strange suddenly..........the world slowing around him.....he could see him mother's eyes flaring as she concentrated to hit the intruder with Grants...his aunt was lining up for a head shot from across the room, in the kitchen....but they were both moving so slowly that he could have sat there all day and watched them move an inch....even the intruder seemed to take forever to move even a foot forward, brandishing his scythe with murder in his eyes.....

Sean realized that he could move normally, despite the slowness of all around him. Without really thinking, he ran toward the intruder, clearly a human with the build of a Hunter....a Ranger would have gotten a hit in with whatever gun he had shot at Sean with, but the Scythe was explained by the man's Hunter build......Sean reached him and began hitting the man hard and fast, dashing all around him as fast as he could, hitting hard with the cane, beating the man over the head with it, then across the face, then slapping the flat of it across the man's posterior. The, to finish the job, he ran past him and caught the man in the man-place with the head of the cane as he passed......the world sped up without warning, causing Sean to collide into the wall...the intruder found himself suffering the laws of physics as he was tossed about by the force of many hits that came too quickly to see, including one that hit him in the butt and a final blow that hit him in his man-place when a bolt of hard light caught him in the same place as that last hit, and he found himself hit with a localized casting of Grants in the same place, AT THE SAME TIME!!!!

Alarms rang within the intruder's mind as his vision was flooded with stars and bright lights.....he collapsed to the floor, clutching his man-place and gag-coughing a protest to the mauling of his virility.

"Hmph....that's what happens to people who mess with my family." Sean said to the intruder, just as Squall shot through the door of their house, brandishing his RED SABER heroically and yelling loudly about destroying all evil, once and for all. "You are late." Sean said.

"Darn....I missed the partah!" Squall said dejectedly......His second MAG, Bhirava's twin, spun happily around it's twin, the two MAGs chirping excitedly.

Suddenly, yelling could be heard across the street, at David's house, as every member of his family began to beat down on another intruder.....Sean and his family and Squall looked out the front door, just in time to see the intruder get thrown out a window, as cheering could be heard from across the street.

Sarah's father was chasing yet another attacker, wielding two LK-14 Combats as he bellowed horrific war-cries at the intruder, running after him through the streets......and running the intruder right into the waiting arms of his pursuer's entire squadron he commanded....who promptly arrested the intruder, before arresting the other intruders, who would soon find themselves in a jail cell in the detention block of the ship.

The next day..........

Sean awoke to the scent of bacon.

He dressed and quickly ran to the kitchen to claim his food. Squall was already there, scarfing down his third bowl of cereal. "G'morning." Squall said, as he nabbed the last of the bacon, which was two pieces after Sean was done claiming some of it as his own...which was most of it...in fact, all BUT the final two pieces...."Ya know....I was talking with Elenor earlier today. She had heard my MAGs chatting about something odd you did.......something about moving faster than light or something like that......or maybe it was faster than sound...well, anyway....I was wonderin'....where didja learn how ta do that?" Squall asked Sean out of the blue, as Sean was watching an episode of Virtual-On: ARENA. "I don't really know......it just kind of....happened." Sean said to him.

Squall looked at him funny for a second, then shrugged, but with a sly look on his face....

Sean caught the Pop-Tart as soon as it got within arms reach....then looked at it in shock.....then at Squall, who looked at him with wide eyes....."It happened....again....." Sean said...

The doorbell rang. Both of them jumped in their seats. Sean looked over at the door, and saw Sarah and David waiting for him.....David was registering to become a Force in the Hunters Guild today, and they were coming with him. Sean got up, and crammed the last of the bacon in his mouth....a major feat.....

.Sean set his tray down in the kitchen, and went to his mother's room, then his aunt's room, and after a minute of Good Morning/See you later greetings, "See ya later." he said to Squall, as he ran out the door, hauling his backpack, full of various...stuff, like a drawing pad, colored pencils, Portable Game system..........and his new Cane, strapped to the side of it.....the three of them headed downtown toward the Hunters Guild........


	3. Hunters Guild, and a mysterious encounte...

**(I don't own PSO or any characters created by SonicTeam, just my own characters)**

**CHAPTER 3**

**Hunters Guild, and a mysterious encounter**

As the three teens left Sean's house, they were fairly silent, Sean figited with his Section ID badge, he was a GREENILL. He thought a moment about saying something, but just as he had worked up the courage to say what he was going to say, he saw a flash of red and white jumping from rooftop to rooftop....he nudged Sarah and David both, and gestured subltely to where he had seen the spectacle....they saw nothing, as it had already vanished. He shrugged and they continued toward the city, a half hour later arriving without incident.

"There it is, The Hunters Guild." Sarah said. David looked at all of the Hunters, Rangers and Forces milling about. Sean saw a Force eye his Cane for a moment before shrugging and walking inside. A pink and white Android followed him in, a wicked looking rifle slung over her shoulder casually, as if it were a parasol.

They walked inside, seeing a tall Hunter standing at the counter, signing a digital holoform with a stylus. Sean and Co. froze in place. They had seen this man before, he had a Delsaber's Buster (it's right arm) in a makeshift sling to carry it in, and a the left arm of a Delsaber, using it as a shield, strapped to his left arm. Sean had heard from Squall that this man's name was Adus.

Adus turned, feeling eyes focused on him, and saw three teens staring, mouths agape, at him. One of his two Kama twin MAGs chittered at him, the other taking the stylus he had used to sigh his contract and depositing it at the counter before returning to him. "Hm....that one.....his eyes.....hm...." Adus said to himself, as he stared at Sean's eyes...which were an unusual shade of green....a very bright shade, that seemed to glow in the light. Sean looked away, uncomfortable with someone looking at him like that. Adus looked away as well, realizing that he had been gawking, and headed for the door, pausing for just a moment longer to regard the three of them, before making his exit.

"What....was that all about?" Sean said to no one in particular...."Why did he look at me like that?"

The three of them walked up to the counter, Sarah chatting for a second with the lady at the desk. She came away with a form and signed it in several places before handing it back to the lady. David then spoke with her for a few minutes before she handed him a large stack of papers and a pen. He looked at it in mock horror and posed for Sarah who had brought a camera with her, she took a picture of him with his face of terror look, suppressing a laugh....She walked with him to bench with a coffee table in front of it and began to assist him in filling out the 30 forms handed to him.

Sean stared out of one of the viewports, silently looking at Ragol as Pioneer 2 orbited the beautiful, but deadly, world. He felt someone watching him, and looked to his left, where the Force from outside was next to him, a bemused expression on his face. The Newman Force adjusted a pair of googles and then said "You a Force or something? 'Cause I've never seen just anyone running around town brandishing a Cane."

Sean looked at him. "No, I'm not.....why?' Sean answered with a question of his own.

"Oh......I just noticed that you had the feel of one of us....a sharp intellect and my amazingly quick wit..." the Newman said in reply..."Well.....I was kinda thinking about becoming a Hunter or something...." Sean said, not really knowing why he was opening up to this guy...."You have Squall's scent." The weird man said. Sean stared openmouthed and dumbfounded at him...."w-w-w-wha-!? What the blazes are you talking about!?!" Sean demanded as soon as he found his voice again, now slowly becoming kinda freaked out by this odd man..."uuuuhhhhh....." the strange man was looking kind of nervous now....as if Sean had just sprouted spikes and blades from every part of his body or something....he began backing slowly away....others were looking too, Sean realized, and he looked at his reflection....which was no longer exactly human in appearance.....

"What......the......."

He looked at himself again....he looked human again, but his eyes were all weird now, like a cats or something....

"I think I have an idea....and I said that last thing 'cause it seems like you were around Squall recently...I was just going to ask how he was or something, really! Why that just happened......My name is Doctor Montague, by the way....." the Doctor said quickly. Sean just stood where he was......looking at the Doctor for a moment, before....

"So......you have an idea what just happened?" he asked Montague.

"Yeah...I do......but I would need to run some tests first....to confirm what my theory is...." Montague said. "No tests, not yet..." Sean said. Sarah and David had finished David's forms long ago now, and were silently watching the conversation, the forms lay forgotten on the table. Sean looked at them for a second, then back at Montague as he said "Just give me a few minutes....I have to take care of something...."

Sean walked up to the counter, and spoke with the lady for a few minutes, coming away with a stack of papers and a pen.....he sat down at a table, alone, and filled out the paperwork silently, aside from occasional scoffing sounds when he came across a stupid or nutty question...

The crowds had thinned by then, David had taken his forms to the counter and deposited them already. Sean finally finished them forms an hour later and took them to the counter....the lady spoke with him for a few minutes, then told him that the Guild member that he had been given apprenticeship to would be with him momentarily......he sat down with Sarah and David. Montague's beeper sounded, and he walked to the counter, chatted and flirted with the lady for a few minutes, then, dumbfounded, he stared at Sean, who stared right back.

"...so...it was you....." the Doctor said, sneezing.

"Yep.....that's right." Sean said.

"So, your name is Sean then......hm....very interesting! And David, my apprentice! Hello! How are you!?" Montague said, hyper now that he had two students, instead of one like normally.

"uhhhh.....good......?" David said, kinda freaked out by the overwhelming power of the Doctor's uber-enthusiasm.


	4. Sudden Death

**(I don't own PSO or any characters created by SonicTeam, just my own characters)**

**CHAPTER 4**

**Sudden Death**

As Sean and Co. returned to their homes that evening, they were talking incecantly about what had happened in the span of one day. Not just one, but two of them were joining Sarah as Members of the Hunters Guild. Sean was now working with the Doctor on a theory that Montague had about Sean...that would corrilate to something he and Squall had discovered once. They had even gotten to see a famous, no....Legendary Hunter, Adus!

They split up once they got to their home block, heading to their respective homes for the night.

The next day...

As they met up at the Hunters Guild.....

"Missing!? How many did they say?" someone asked, panicked.

"About twenty-plus....and with no trace too! Not a single shred of evidence!" someone else said.

"I heard they sent Adus to find out what happened! But they haven't heard from him either, not since he entered the Monument......" a third person interjected.

"What!? ADUS!? But....that's impossible! He couldn't have failed!" the first person said.

Sean and David heard the panicked conversation.....Sarah rushed to meet them.

"I just got news that-"She began, "Yeah, we heard! It's crazy!" David said.

"So....you heard......" the voice of Montague floated from behind them...they turned to see him dressed as a Newman Force would clad themselves if they were prepared to go into battle. Elenor, his Android companion and friend, stood beside him with her wicked rifle again.....and even Squall was with them.

"Squall, you're going down there....aren't you?" Sarah asked her mentor, she was his apprentice.

"Yes. I am." He said, his usual humorous attitude was gone, replaced by a serious, grave demeanor. "Then...I'm coming with you, and you had better let me." She said to him, he began to open his mouth...but then remembered an incident that she had helped him with, weeks before. He nodded his head gravely...."Pops isn't gonna like this..." he said. "Well, he is gonna have to...consider it another part of my training." She said.

Montague was reading aloud things on a checklist, with Elenor checking to see that they had the item with them. Sean and David stood watching for a moment, then, surprising all of the others, "We're coming too." They said in unison.

The others looked at them. "Sean, David.....you two aren't ready for combat...not by a long sho-"Squall began before Sean interrupted hotly.

"Yes, we are! Right David?"

"Right!"

Squall looked at them, he studied them, seeing that they had the determination to follow through with their statements. He looked at Montague....who shrugged..."If they wanna....why not? It will be an experience...and we can see if they have what it takes." He said finally.

Suddenly....

Alarms began to blare incesantly throughout the ship.

"Dangit! Incoming!!" Squall shouted, as a red and white blur rushed at them, hitting him hard in the head before even he could react, and flatout knocking out most of the others in the area before they even knew what was happening. Sean's perception of his surroundings became distorted suddenly.....

David and Sarah were both fighting this blur....and soon were knocked out. Sean's vision and senses sharpened to a keen edge....everything around him slowing down.......everything...even the blur, which was clearly the android from before....it looked at him, seeing that he could keep an eye on him, even with its speed. It activated its armblades, and charged at him, still too slow to overwhelm him....

He sidestepped it and clocked it over the head with his Cane, before grabbing its head and running alongside it, carrying it forward with its own momentum and right into a bulkhead. It's head collided with a resonating clang.

It pulled back from the wall, clearly unharmed, but leaving an impression of its head in the bulkhead.

"You....are stronger than this unit had assumed.....threat potential analysis now upgraded......this unit will take it's leave...for now.....farewell, until this unit encounters you again." It said, in that creepy female-type voice, before shooting up the side of the bulkhead and leaping onto the roof of a building, disappearing from view....

His surroundings sped up, his senses did not dull like he had expected though....

The others arose slowly, as though coming out of a deep sleep.....


	5. IDOLA awakening

**(I don't own PSO or any characters created by SonicTeam, just my own characters)**

**CHAPTER 5**

**IDOLA Awakening**

(this chapter will be shown from a slightly different perspective....)

It....

It first knew of itself at its first moment of concious awareness....awareness of its own existance....awareness beyond base instincts.

It knew that it needed to feed, it knew what would sustain it......hate, suffering, fear, all things born of darkness. It knew how to create this, these things that would sustain it.

It made its move.

Many died, but it did not care beyond that it gained nutrition from other beings terror.

It knew what these beings called it....

Dark Force, and later, as dialects changed, Dark Falz....

It knew thousands of years of feeding, until ones who discovered how to defeat it came and contained it....and then it only knew sleep............until.............................

It awoke once more, and sensed that it was not where it was upon its defeat, but somewhere else....and that the beings, Humans, that had beaten it before had come again.....perhaps without knowlege that they had come to the new home of their very bane, and at the worst possible time.....

In an act of rage and wrath, it struck out and destroyed the beings way of escape. it turned the resident creature of the planet against them. One came to it, and tryed to defeat it, only to fail......It felt a sense of justice from this one....and that it would be unable to feed from this visitor, for she feared it not, it hated it not, instead......and this really angered It......She wnated to study it, like it was a scientific discovery. It sealed her in the chamber that had held itself and just as it had completed the seal, 4 others came, fought and injured it, then left for a ship orbiting around the forsaken world....

It knew........that it was only a matter of time, before that ship with its residents, landed, and became foder for the feast that would sustain its own armies....before they were unleashed upon the universe.......

Time passed, 35 years.....and now....

It felt that the ones who had beaten but not defeated it had come back to its world.

It watched them with hate through the eyes of every animal upon the planet........

It glowered, thinking dark thoughts.....

Its thoughts drifted to thinking about how it could make the ones who had hurt it suffer......suffer and die....horribly.


	6. Monument of death

**(I don't own PSO or any characters created by SonicTeam, just my own characters)**

**CHAPTER 6**

**Monument of death**

The Hunters had taken a hour to recover from the attack, and to prepare for the mission. Sean, Sarah and David had gone to their families to alert them that they had a mission, and that they might be gone for a few days.

After all was delt with, and Squall finished flirting with the lady at the Hunters Guild counter (eye rollage), they silently entered the teleport statiobn, already having set the cordinates for the area surrounding the newly discovered Monument, where the disappearances have been occuring.

Upon arrival, as the golden light of teleportation faded, one could clearly see something was up.....

"This is just wierd....creepy, in fact...they're just...stareing at us....with some kind of attitude problem...." Dr. Montague said, thoroughly freaked out by this..."yes....it is pretty freaky. Be on your guard, just in case. I fear that something may be behind this.....I can feel Dark Force's eyes on us, as if IT were watching us through the eyes of the native creatures....look how they glare with loathing at us..." Squall said, all normal humor gone, replaced with grave calm....though.....he did stick his tounge, and then wave, at one of the glaring Boomas, just to releave some of the tension that had built up.

One of the Boomas saw Sean, locking eyes with him for a moment.

He heard a hateful voice in his head...._"You foul thing....creature spawned of genetic fusion of two more loathful beings, neither of the other's race, a hybrid....you are too dangerous to allow to live."_ it said into his head.....but the voice was so foul that it made him feel ill to merely have it in his head...like something of pure evil had entered his head to force those words upon his mind. He swayed slightly, Sarah saw this. "you alright?" she asked, concerned. "y-yeah....I'm fine...." he said....not feeling fine. He straightened, trying to look like he was alright, like he was able to easily take down this Booma like it was nothing, like he would be able to take down the foul thing of darkness that had spoken to him.....it was an act of defiance, that he walked over to the glaring Booma, and grinning, he messed up the hair on its head. It merely glared back at him.......

"Sean, stop it." Squall said, getting a bit nervous around al these glaring creatures....even the Rappies were glowering fouly at them, one of them using Montague's hat as a toilet, glaring at him the entire time as it flew over him and made its deposit.

"Let's get to the Monument." Squall said.

They all made various comments or gestures of agreement, glad to leave the area where the glaring animals were.

As they arrived at the Monument, the first thing that was strange besides the unusual, but different from the Ruins, arcitechtre was that there seemed to be statues made of weak sandstone...statues of Hunters, Rangers, Forces...even places where there had been statues...but were now little more than piles of sand. They were puzzled at this for a moment, until Squall touched one of the statues, and it crumbled, but not before he had seen the face of the Hunter it had been formed after....."Zechs.....I knew that guy......dangit...I could feel some of him IN that statue..as if he WAS the statue. See all of these guys, Montague? Isn't that Herris, over there?" quall asked.

"yeah...that was him....I think that you are right, Squall, these statues were once people.....this is like when Metroids attack. Hm....I hope none of those stinkers are here.....that would be just the gee-darned-dandiest of all happy things in the universe, if we had loose Metroids flying about.....just a buttload of Happy-Happy-Happy...in fact, I might just sing and dance my freakin' butt of right now, I am so happy!....wheres the Tylenol!?" Montague said, in a bad mood, accompanied by eye rollage.

They walked up to the closed doors of the Monument. Squall had checked every single remainling statue, to see if Adus was among them, and was releived to seee that Adus was not amoung the statues outside. He was surpirsed to see people not from Pioneer 2 amoung the statues...in fact there was someone from Pioneer 1, a well known Hunter, named Graun, frozen in eternal terror...Squall noted for the record that Graun was not easlily shaken, let alone flat out terrified...."something really, majordomo bad happened here..." Squall said.

They tryed to open the doors, but the doors would not move.

"Hmph....this is just GREAT!!!!" Montague said, now getting mad.

Sean got a feeling......an odd one.....

He walked up to the door, and as he got within a meter of it, it opened.

The others looked at him, confused. He returned their looks, feeling the same way as they did about this, unnerved.

"looks like we can get in now." Sean said to break the silence, as they had been standing around for a full five minutes waiting for something to happen...somthing good, something bad, just...something...and it did not come...

no avatar of death to destroy them all....

nothing...

They walked in the open doorway....

as soon as they had all entered, the doors slammed shut behind them, the stone doors banging together loudly.

They were now inside of the Monument.


	7. Madman, and an alliance of sorts

**(I don't own PSO or any characters created by SonicTeam, just my own characters)**

**CHAPTER 7**

**Madman, and an alliance of sorts**

The Hunters turned to see the door slam shut, and then they heard things come, clawlike limbs ripping at the stone floor. Squall grabbed the closest one and threw it at a wall.

"SHADOW! Form up! Don't let them touch you!" Squall ordered.

One of the SHADOW shot its right arm at Montague, he weaved around it, Elenor pumped rounds of Photon bullets into its armored carapace, bringing it down quickly. It wasn't done however, and it shot a crimson beam at Sean, who saw it too late.

It hit him in the chest, but instead of vaporizing him like it would a normal Human, it merely disapated against him. He stared for a second, then somehow, he cast a devistating variation of Foie at it, lighting it ablaze. It exploded seconds later, splatering them all with a hot bluegreen muck. "So nasty!" Sarah said as she flung some of it off of herself, into the eyes of another SHADOW, who was temporarily blinded by the melted remains of its ally. Blinded...long enough for Squall to run his RED SABER through it like it was paper.

Sean noted that Squal seemed to be driven by some madness, the way he fought these so-called SHADOW. He was everywhere, running around them and slashing them to pieces, even clawing and biting at one of them.

Sean shrugged and saw twenty SHADOW who had Sarah, David, Montague and Elenor trapped in a corner.

"DAMN YOU! GET AWAY FROM THEM!" He said and a single thought ran thorugh his mind, destroy.

A swift wind picked up suddenly, derbis swirling about them insanely. The SHADOW found themselves trapped within collums of burning light.....light that a second later, intensified to an insane degree, ionizing them as if some kind of beam cannon had fired upon them. He then whirled about to face a good couple dozen more as they came from holes in the walls. He merely looked at them and they were suddenly engulfed in searing flames. The others had stopped fighting, transfixed by this insane spectacle. All, but Squall, who was chewing on the arm of one SHADOW that was entwined around him like a feral creature of darkness. Soon though, the only SHADOW left was the one still clinging to Squall like a vice, and paying for it, as it soon resembaled a velociraptor's chewtoy more than what it had once been. Once it was finished off, they took a few minutes to recover......Sean saw Squall rush off, into the next room, and Sean followed him. He ran, the distance increasing as Squall outpaced him quickly.

When Squall finally vanished past a corner, Sean floowed and when he heard fighting in the next room, he quickened his pace even more.

What he had expected was to see Squall hacking a SHADOW into pieces....

instead....

what he saw of what looked like Squall more resembaled a feral creature of some sort, wild red hair flowing behind it as it lept upon a SHADOW, using its clawed feet to latch onto it and ripping at the SHADOW's face with its clawed hands.

It pushed the SHADOW back as it lept off of it's chest, the SHADOW burst aflame and exploded, Squall or whatever looked kinda like him was already on another SHADOW. Squall (Sean assumed this) had his jaws clamped down on the SHADOW's long neck, fire in his eyes. The now mauled SHADOW fell to the ground and exploded, the room now looking more like Hell than a stone ruin, with flaming chucks of SHADOW and even BURNING STONE (however the heck the stone was burning) everywhere. even the walls were aflame.

Soon, the others arrived, now staring horified at the hellish visage of a mad fiend beating a SHADOW over its head with its own right arm, flames burning all around him and his hair was on fire. Suddenly, Sean saw a blur, red and white, arrive, pursuing several fleeing and panicked SHADOW, leaping from one to another and mauling them. Soon, the madman and the android were fighting along side oneanother, as were the rest of the Hunters, against larger, nastier SHADOW. "Beta SHADOW!" Squall rasped wildly and beheaded one with a beam of fire, running the beam down the rest of it to finish the job.

Sarah lept onto the back of one SHADOW and began stabing repeatedly with her Buster, over and over again. it fell, and she lepted off, using it as a springboard for her jump onto another SHADOW, who got knocked over by David as he was sent flying into it by another Beta SHADOW who had punched him in the head, hard. He got up and saw the face of an enraged SHADOW looming just infront of him, its mouth opening and reveiling rows of teeth that moved like a chainsaw. "Gah!" David shouted and hit it with Grants right to the head, causing it to blow away like a flashbomb had detonated in its mouth.

"Nice kill, David!" Montague shouted from across the room, giving him a thumbs up as he lashed out at several SHADOW with several Gizonde shots, shocking the SHADOW and causing them to explode.

Elenor saw a SHADOW sneaking up behind the Doctor and unloaded on it with two LK-14 Combats. It fell and detonated.

Sean sensed something amis. He spun around and saw a man before him......FLOATING!

"What the-!?"

The man laughed and floated out of the room. By that time, all of the SHADOW in the room had fallen. Sean followed the floating man, but quickly lost him, so he came back to the main group.

Squall found himself the target of many a gawker. They staered at him, waiting for him to say something, such as an explanation....or just anything. He bolted suddenly, unable to think of anything else to do but run in panic.

They followed him, soon finding that he had been running for the outside.

hey entered the main entrance, and found that the stone door had been melted into oblivion.

The exited through the gaping hole in it and found him standing very still............staring at a floating creature, vaugly resembaling an aquatinc organism of some sort.

It had pinchers on its underside, and a red triple nucleus in its core. It had an exterior that was semi-transparent.

Chirping wildly, it rushed at him, he braced himself to lunge in return, but was knocked aside by the red and white blur, the Android, who lactched onto it to slow it down. Montague hit the thing with Gibarta to freeze it, the Android jabbing a bladed hand through it to shatter it.

The Android landed upright, and stared for a moment at the shatered peices of the unknown organism.

"Metroid, this unit's namesake. perhaps one of the most dangerous creatures in this galaxy." It said.

It turned to face them. "It seems that this unit has underestimated you all. This unit did not think that any of you aside from the Valka.." it paused and glansed at Squall, before continuing face and defeat a single SHADOW, fighting as a group against it, and win...but this unit has indeed been mistaken." it said.

"This unit applauds you all for your skill. This unit requests to join you, under a condition......" it said.

"Name it." Montague said.

"This unit is in need of assistance in eliminating a threat to itself, its creators wish to end this unit's functions, they wish to terminate this unit. This unit does not desire termination." It said.

Montague thought for a moment, then turned to the others.

"I kinda am curious about that Android, so if none of you object, I think we need an new ally....and I'm willing to take on its enemy if necacary." he said to them, they gave various gestures and comments of assent to his plan, and he turned toward the Android.

"You have a deal. What is you name, anyway?" Montague asked.

The Android glanced at the melting remains of the terminated Metroid.

"This unit's designation is Metroid-ZERO." the Android said, as it removed the ridged helmet on its head, reveiling a humanoid face with redish eyes with no pupils.


	8. The Great Corporate Hunt Begins

**(This unit does not own PSO or related characters)**

**CHAPTER 8**

**The Great Corporate Hunt begins**

"Nice to meet you, Metroid-ZERO." Sean said, being the first to approach the Android.

It, no, she nodded in return.

"So....whos after ya?" Squall asked ZERO, or Zee, as he was already thinking of her as.

She looked up toward the sky, toward where she had detected the Pioneer 2. "A corporation specializing in Positronics, Sentinel Electronics, and their partner who specializes in manufacturing of Android and worker unit production, General Aerodyne. (Get it? Sentinel Electronics General Aerodyne S-E-G-A)" She said.

"They produced this unit to use as a prototype for a mass-production model of HighGrade Combat Androids, HUcaseal-Nu. They decided that this unit was no longer needed, and decided to procede with termination. This unit managed to escape however, and has also aquired valuble recon data pertaining to their TRUE goal in the use of these Nu units. They intend to use them in a bid for control of Pioneer 2. SE-GA must be stopped!" ZERO said, emphasising the last comment by forming her left hand into a fist, as she brought it to eye level.

"Alright, anything else we should know?" Montague asked. ZERO shook her head in reply, "No....nothing further." She said.

"Ok, lets get moving. ZERO, where is this SE-GA?" Squall asked. She pionted up toward Pioneer 2. "Roger that. Lets MOVE OUT!" Squall said.

"You may want to hold up for a second........I found that there is something happeneing....something bad." a voice said rom behind them. all but Squall turned around. "Roger that.....how long do you think we have?" Squall asked the Hunter who had arrived just a moment ago......"Adus!" Montague said.

"Not too long, unfortunately.....I will stay here and see what I can do about it. You do whatever you have to do. Just make sure to water the cactus, when you get to the ship." Adus said to Squall. he turned to head into the Monument, then turned his head toward them and regarded them at an angle. "Meet me back here when you are done with your little corporate bashfest, have fun on the hunt, Squall." Adus said and floated back through the open dopors of the Monument.

An hour after they arrived on Pioneer 2......

Sean walked into the kitchen of his house with a bucket of Android armor paint. Squall was washing the dust out of a set of old brushes. ZERO watched them passively, sitting in her chair and alternating between staring at them and playing Chess with Dr. Montague. "Checkmate." she said, moving her knight into the correct position to both attack his king and to expose his king to attack from her Queen as well. He looked for a way out quickly and then, resigned to defeat, leaned his king over on its side. "Good game, Zee!" he said to her. Sean looked at the borad quickly as he set the bucket of paint down, and nearly choked. Not many could beat the Doctor at Chess, aside from Sean himself. Squall always said it was because they both thought out of the normal realm of thinking, in other words, they were both insane, so no one could figure out what they were going to do.

"Got those brushes ready Squall?" Sean asked. "Roger." Squall replyed. They had decided, with ZERO's aproval, that she should be repainted, so that if anyone were to see her, she would not look so like the image in the wanted posters plastered pratically all over the ship.

She walked over to were they had set down sheets of plastic, and extended her arms out. Sean and Squall both took brushes and picked a color, white or grey, and began to paint.

Seans mother walked into the house at that point, and saw them painting an Android. She saw the color cheame, and saw the helmet siting on the counter.....it all looked exactly as that new model HUcaseal-Nu that had escaped. "DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT IS!?!?!?!" She asked, Battle Verge already in hand. "Don't worry. this is just a friend from my school, she just looks like that one, so were repainting her to avoid confusion." Sarah said smoothly, while the males were still trying to think of anything coherant to say, aside from grunting sounds or a "douuhhh" noise.

Seans mother saw right through it. However, she also had already heard from Elenor earlier on that day, saying that they hd found the runaway unit and it was merely trying to protect itself. She still was a bit steamed that they had just let it right into the house and begun to paint it, with BRUSHES! "That won't work at all!" She said to them. "Sean, get the MAG mantenance kit. It has the right tools to paint with. An Android's outer shell is made of the same material as a MAG's....so the method of aplication will work." Mother said. He had already gotten it by the time she was done explaining why they needed it. "Got it!" he said. She flipped the lid open and grabbed a powersprayer. "Load the paint into this, and use it to pain with, that should work. Brushing doesn't imbed the paint into the metal.

They did as she said, and in just a half hour, the repaint was complete. Squall had erected a mirror from tinfoil for ZERO to see their handiwork with.

"Hmmm....this unit prefered its old coloration, but realizs that this is nesasary until it is safe for this unit to reveil itself." ZERO said.

"Alright then, shall we look for the enemy?" Montague said.

"Roger that, this unit will show you where SE-GA is located, and assist you in rendering them inert." ZERO said to them.

"Come with this unit." She said, as she walked out of the front door.


	9. Hunter's Bane

**(This unit does not own PSO or any related characters)**

**CHAPTER 9**

**Hunter's Bane**

The CEO of Sentinel Electronics walked into the meeting room of General Aerodyne.

"What is it that was so important that I had to be dragged away from my weekly training?" Garon said, irritated. "Cool your jets old man." The CEO of General Aerodyne, Christine Shackle, said to him ofhand. She regarded him through an artificail eye, the red glowing lens glaring coldly. "Your late. Shall we start this bloody meeting then?" she said, the various corporate types around them nodding their assent.

"Alright." She said, and rose from her seat. she hit a control on her desk, a holographic display activating.

On it, was a holograph of schematics for a new model Android, the HUcaseasl-Nu. "This is our latest model of combat Androud, a female-type unit. We have at least twenty batches already made, and ready to use at any time, however, I want to wait to deploy until we absolutely need them. However, I am makeing an exception for ten of the highgrade variants, designed and modified to take down the Prototype unit. This HUcaseal-Nu series is code named Metroid, after the organisms encountered thirty-odd years ago, on our way to this nightmare of a planet. The Prototype that escaped is designated as Metroid-ZERO. It has several redundantcy systems installed to render it useless if it were to go Maverick, however, it seems to have overridden them all, indicating an advanced inteligence....either that, or someone else has overridden them and then allowed it to go on its way, killing and maiming as it maraudes about the ship." She said. One of the corporates yawned. She hit the man with her right arm, a cybernetic unit. He fell out of his seat, unconcious. "no yawning." she said, and continued with her tiresome retoric.

Just as she opened her mouth to speak, an alarm rang loudly, and the emergency lights activated, bathing them all in a ruddy glow. "what the bloody hell is going on now?!" She said.

"Ma'am! LOOK DOWN BELOW!" one of the younger, more excitable ones urged. She complyed, curious to see what he was blabering about, and stopped still in her tracks as she saw what was happening.

"Grrr........terminate them, NOW!" she roared at a blue and red HUcaseal-Nu unit, of the Metroid Series. "Yes, ma'am, this unit will comply." it said, and proceded down to the main courtyard, where a major fight was being fought.

"Squall! We won't be able to get in there, if we just sit around and blow drones to bits from here, we have to get in!" Montague said.

"Roger that! I will keep them occupied while you all get inside." Squall told them, Sarah looked at him for a seco0nd, then followed the others as they snuck toward the entrance doors. Squall jumped out from behind the stone statue of an ancient Android, named Wren. He ran at the combat drones and began blasting at them with beams of fire.

Suddenly, a blue and red blur streaked by Squall and attacked ZERO. She took off at it and the two units began pumuling eachother, now both hovering about a good ten meters above the ground, still beating at eachother. Clangs could be heard as metal fists connected. Squall saw another form coming at them, a large one. "Dang, another combat unit!?"

"Hello, Squall. We meet again! Say hello to Hunter's Bane, my newest weapon, made just to destroy you!" A familiar, hateful voice sounded at him from loudspeakers built into its head.

"No....it can't be......" Squall said, looking up at the top floor of the General Aerodyne building, just as he suspected, the CEO, Christine Shackle, was standing in the window, glareing at him. He made much eye rollage, and jumped at the bulky, murderous Android.

"Don't even try it." She said, and speakers rose from its shoulders.

A loud, uber-highpitched screech sounded from the speakers.

"HOLY-!?!?" Squall began to say, until he could take no more, and fell to the ground clutching his head. Even on the other side of the compound, Sean could hear a horrible sound. "What the blazes is THAT!?" He asked. Montague shrugged, unsure of it.

Up above them, now twenty meters in the air, ZERO drove her right hand into the Mass-Pro type version of herself 's torso and ruined the powercore, a small fusion furnace. She withdrew her hand quickly and drifted back to avoid the blast that came a moment later as the power core detonated. The ridged helmet began to fall but she caught it, and threw it right at the left speaker on Hunter's Bane.

Squall saw a head, or at least a helmet impact with the left speaker of doom, and destroy it, the sound output was down enough to be somewhat tolerable now, and he quickly destroyed the other speaker to prevent it from makeing the sound worse.

"You insurferable bleep! I will destroy you yet! MEGA-PARTICLE-BEAM-CANNON!" She bellowed insanely at him as a panel on the chest of the Android opened and a long barreled cannon extended from it. "I don't think so!" Squall said and hit it with a blast of fire from the inside of the cannon, ruining the fireing mechanism. "BLAST YOU SQUALL! DIE! JUST DIE SQUALL!" She screamed at him, before she turned to face the barrel of Elenor's rifle.

"We got her, Squall, and the others. They are currently unconcious, by the way." Montague said to Squall through the loudspeaker that Ms. Psyco had been accousting him from. "You, you won't get away with this.......you are too foolish for that......this is a hologram of myself, and you can shoot if you want to bother, little android girl." She said, mocking Elenor. The hologram vanished. "Dang it!" Sean could be heard in the background....all these voices coming out of Hunter's Bane's mouth were confusing it....It finally shortcircited and collapsed, sparking and smokeing.

ZERO finished it off by demolishing its power core. It went boom and the others were ready to leave when.......

They found themselves surrounded by blue and red Mass-Pro versions of ZERO.........


	10. Specter of FATE

**(This unit does not own PSO, but owns the characters other than Dr. Montague and Elenor)**

**CHAPTER 10**

**Specter of FATE**

The Hunters were rounded up and placed in holding cells in the lower levels of the SE-GA compound....all but ZERO, who had escaped at the last second.

"Hmph......There has gotta be a way outta here!" Squall said, blasting away at the containment field for the twetyeth time in the past ten minutes....with no effect.

"Squall...." Montague said. Squall looked at him. "Stop it." Montague told him. Squall began clawing at the walls now.

One of the Mass-Pro Metroid uints arrived, looking balefully at the Hunters, and distainfully at Squall, it aimed a rather wiked looking rifle at them. "Montague, this unit was sent to retrieve you. Master wishes to speak to you." It said to him. It walked through the energy shield and grabbed the Doctor by the arm and dragged him with it through the shield.

Squall charged at the shield and hit it full force, the energy field washing over him as he almost got through it. Several Guards came and shoved him back through.

Sean stared at the wall......just staring at it.....he began to see several weaknesses in it, key points where if he were to even tap it, it mights collapse. Human imprecision would make it very dificult to do, but he shrugged and decided to give it a try...but he was going to make sure he did it right, with a bang.

The wall exploded suddenly, in an eruption of light-blasted stone. The others turned to look at the source of the loud sound, seeing Sean walking out of a hole in the wall.

"What the hell!?" one of the Guards said, in shock, just before he was greeted by a fireball to the crotch. That Guard fell, cluching a place that shall not be spoken of now in utter pain and agony. Squall whirled around the corner and tackled the other Guard, biting the man in the arm, at the wrist, causing him to drop his gun. Sean cast a weak Grants on them both to knock them out, then they proceded to make a run for the other cell, where Sarah, David, and Elenor were being held. Sounds of fighting could be heard from above them, screams of terror and panic.

Sean pushed it all out of his mind, and continued with his objective, releasing the others. He managed to crack the code for the lock, and the Shield collapsed. "Lets find the Doctor!" Sean said. "Good idea, Elenor, can you track his location?" Squall asked her. "yes. he is on the top floor, with Shackle." Elenor said to them. "Roger that, Lets MOVE OUT!" Squall ordered and they headed for the stairs that lead to the courtyard where the fighting was taking place.

As they arrived, they could see blurs dashing about, a white and grey one seemed to be outpacing, and outfighting, the other red and blue ones. Guards lay unconcious on the ground, or cowering behind statues and other objects.One blur, a red and blue one streaked toward the Hunters. Time seemed to slow for Sean, but he was getting used to this now, and he was ready, as he grabbed a card from his pocket and it became a Battle Verge, he waited until he could see its face, then, he swung the mighty staff and whacked it across the face, knocking it to the ground.

As he was about to finish it, a dark beam rained down from somewhere, burning into it and causing it to disolve into dust.

A sinister, floating man appeared above Sean, looking at him with distain. "Hybrids." the man said in disgust, before hitting another one of the Metroid units with the same attack, bringing it down as well.

Squall saw another of the Androids and lept onto it. he grabbed its right arm and melted the limb at the shoulder. He then ripped the left arm off and began hitting it in the head with its arm. After it fell, he grabbed it by one leg and spun for a second before sending it sailing at a window on the top floor of the General Aerodyne building, right where Shackle was surveying the fight.

Shackle stepped back a few feet to avoid being hit by a deactivated Android, as it shot through the glass window. "heh heh heh.....Squall's mad at you!" Montague said mockingly at her.

"Shut-" She began before a Hunter with brown hair walked into the room, he had ragged uniform of a Hunter, that looked like it had seen a war, and his hair has cut short and roughly, like he had done it himself without a mirror or anything else to see with.

"Release Montague or I'll dice ya up, lady!" the unknown man said, in a ragged, but somehow familliar voice....

Montague saw a broken Section ID badge where there should have been a specific one displayed.

The man drew an Elysion from his belt and activated it. The man fixed his green eyes on Shackle, who was suddenly finding herself unable to move.....

"Get out of here, Doctor." the man said.

Montague stood his ground, studying him. "Get going." the man insisted. Montague shrigged, then ran for the open doors, stopping before vanishing into the hall.

He turned toward the man, who was now looking at him with green eyes that were very familliar, but from where the Doctor could not begin to guess. Montague then got a funny feeling about the guy, like he knew him from somewhere else.....and then it hit him like a ton of bricks.

"its....you...." he said...

"Yes.....now get outta here before the REAL enemy arrives!" the man said.

Montague heeded his warning, and rushed for the main group, who was now on their way to find him.

They met in the foyer of the General Aerodyne building. "Lets get outta here!" Montague said.

They left, quickly.

"Hm..........he was always like that, smart...but ditsy.......hm......time to get out of here." the man said to himself. He nooded politely to Shackle, before setting a telepipe and escaping quickly, the telepipe colapsing after he had used it.


	11. The past, and a revalation

**(This unit does not own PSO or any related characters, only this unit's own characters, does it own)**

**CHAPTER 11**

**The past, and a revalation**

Squall watched as the mystirious floating man vanished.

"Hm......."

Within the time frame of five weeks.....

Squall soon headed to the surface, to meet Adus at the Monument, leaving Sean and his friends with their tutor, Dr. Montague. Sarah hung out with them and struck a chord with ZERO, who soon began to tutor her in the ways of rapid speed combat. Sarah's skills she had learned from Squall were geared toward standing her ground and fighting with in-your-face style of combat, hitting hard with hammerblows intended to destroy and devistate, whereas her new teachings were focused on fast hitting, fast moving combat, to deliver quick and sucesive hits that would slowly eat away at an opponenets defenses and ruin their ability to deliver a counter attack by forceing them to remain defensive. Sarah soon learned to merge the two styles into something new.

David, under Montague's tutalage, soon learned the nuances of being a Force, wich included other, less combat oriented skills, including science, engineering, mentoring, leadership, and other skills in that area. He quickly learned how to control his natural abilities to use techniques, and learning from Montague, and personal expiriance, that individuals each had a certain aspect of magic that they had a natural aptitude for, such as how Sean seemed to have one for Healing, despite how he had managed to cause devistation with his Grants attacks, which Montague confided with them that the healing arts and Grants had a common source, allowing such an aptitude for anything in the light oriented category to work for healing and Grants. David learned that he had an aptitude for electricity, and Montague picked up on this, and taught him primarily in this area for a time, before begining an emphasis on David's weak focuses, heat, cold, light and dark.

He was told, and taught as well, that learning the other skills as well as having the one you seem to be better at, can be a good thing. Montague taught David and Sean both that dark wasn't truly evil, but oriented in attack, and in effecting certain other things, such as strengthining allies and your own defencive and combat capabiliy along with doing the reverse to your enemies. He DID emphasise that there was a certain level of hazard in using dark connected things, especially the combat technique recently banned from use, Megid, the death curse, as it had been used by a madman years before, 5 to be precice, as a weapon of murder, on a killing spree ended by a Hunter, who had sought the madman out to defeat him.

Montague would never say the man's name, and if Sean or David would ask, Montague would either ignor the question, or tell them that the Hunter had never had a known name, and had died nameless, after defeating the madman. Sean, David, and Sarah, who hung out with them and was tutoring herself about Forcey stuff by listening in on Montague's teachings, never bought this coverup...they knew that Montague was being sectretive about this man's identity...

As for Sean.....

Montague was tutoring him in a separate class, and on things other than Forcey things, knowing that Sean's mother had taught him thse things already.

Montague's focus was more on helping Sean to gain control of the abiities that they knew he had, and trying to discover nes that had not yet revieled themsleves to Sean. There had been much success at this, and Sean, who had agreed once to allow Montague to study him, grew curious as to why Montague seemed to have some ideas of what to try to find as far as his abilities were concenred, and how the Doctor was comparing the results of various test with those of someone else, and after Sean found records that had been made of someone unidentified on the data sheets.........

Sean confronted the Doctor.

Sean walked into Montague's office, and tossed a folder onto his desk. Montague was listening to some kind of horrible screaching music throigh headphones and did not hear the folders impact. Sean unplugged the headphones. Montague looked around for a second, then...

"Why did you do that?" the Doctor asked.

Sean pointed at the folder.

"Oh dear.....you found it, didn't you? I knew it was only a matter of time, time I knew was running short." Montague said.

"Who." Sean asked.

Montague sighed.....he got up from his chair, walked to his window, which looked out on a view of Ragol, where the sun could be seen setting below the horizon of the planet.

"Squall." Montague said.

Sean looked surprised, no, shocked. "What? I saw your notes....I compared them myself, to the ones you made from your studies of me, and now.......does this mean....?" Sean said.

"....That your like him, nonhuman, something he calls a Valka?" Montague asked, Sean nodded.

"Yes.......it is true.........and....something that bothers me......I can feel another source of power within you, that is giving you your insanely high power boost to your control of techniques, including your ability to pratically anihalate those SHADOW in the Monument about five weeks ago. Something that Squall explained was something of a trademark of his race, their own source of ELEMENTAL magic, different from our Techniques, but can be merged with Techniques, like how you have been doing that without even knowing......If you don't learn control of that source soon however............it could consume you from the inside. Squall told me a horror story from his childhood, how a friend of his....lost control of himself and was destroyed by his own hatred. Being the truth-seeker that i am...I asked for some proof of this....Squall offered the best proof that he could, a front row seat into his memories of the event....even if I could show you...I would NOT show you....No one should have to see it." Montague said, his eyes were filled with sadness and fear. He looked away, toward Ragol. "Squall also told me other things...about you....that he said that if anything were to happen to him, I was to tell you, when you were ready.....and not before, Squall made this very clear to me." Montague said.

Sean sensed there was some that he could be told, and he pressed the attack.

"There IS something you can tell me though, right?" Sean said, not asking, saying for fact.

"Yes." Montague told him. "Sit." Montague said to him pulling a chair up to the desk with a wave of his hand. Sean sat.

"Years ago, you were found, on Ragol. Squall and your parents came along, I was with them, and we could not leave you just sitting there, a baby. We all decided to take you in, for a time, we were stranded on Ragol, and during that time, we raised you collectively. Once we found a way back to Pioneer 2, we registered you under a name, Sean. We had to decide who would be your completely adoptive family, and your mother and aunt, sisters who you had taken a shine to, and the same going for them, decided to take that role, legally adopting you." Montague said to him. "....I see. I knew of the adoption, and I know for a certainty that I would never change how things whent. Never. I did not know the details though...." Sean said.

"Yes, the four of us decided that you should know some of this now, there are those things that you need time to mature before you should know of them, however, that is all I can say. I actually knew who you were six weeks ago, in the Hunters Guild......I have been keeping tabs on you for a while now...." Montague said to him.

Sean just stared at the planet.

"Perhaps, I should have waited...?" Montague said...."No. It is better this way, that I know this." Sean said. "There is one other thing that I need to tell you.......the form you are in ow, Human in appearance, is a result of some tinkering with your physical structure, curtousey of Adus, a friend of Squall's.......Adus showed me how to counter it, and restore it, and I can show you if you wish to.....however, certain levels of stress with result in a temporary revert to your true form, or a partial revert, but it will be temporary...like what happened to you in the Hunters Guild that day...." Montague said.

"Show me how to reverse the effect, and restor it." Sean said.

"Roger that.....now, or later?" the Doctor asked. "Now." Sean said, eager to see the results. "Alright.......its not something that I can outright say directly...more of something that has to be transfered by mental connection.....look me in the eyes Sean." Montague said. Sean did so.......

Elenor walked in on their staring contest. She set a damaged MAG on his desk, then sat down, waiting for him to finish with the task at hand......ten seconds later....

Sean broke contact....He saw the damaged MAG, picking it up, he realized what was wrong with it right then......he realinged some key internal parts in it, and it came back online. "There ya go, Ely." Sean told her, releasing the MAG and watching as it floated around for a bit, before floating toward him. It refused to leave him...."She seems to like you." Elenor told him. "Sean....you think you are ready to try your new ability yet?" Monntague asked him. "Yes." Sean said.

A green aura glowed around him, and he soon was only a glowing object within a pillar of light.

When the light faded, he looked different.

Montague touched a control on his dest, and a vanity mirror raised from the floor.

Sean turned toward it, to see himself. "Dang...wicked!" He commented. His face was like Squall's...his hair was a greenish color, he looked at his hands, which ended in claws...."Dang....that looks like it would hurt...." he said.

He heard somemone approaching, courtesy of his enhanced hearing. He reverted to his Human form, the conversion completed just before David entered the room. "You ready to head home, Sean?" David asked him. "Go home. You have had a long day. Get some sleep, Sean." Montague said. Sean gathered his books and crammed them into his backpack. "See you tommorow, Doc!" Sean told Montague, who waved at him. "See ya Ely!" He said to Elenor. She waved to him as well.

Sean and David headed home, Sean's new MAG following him.


	12. Night of malicity

**(This unit does not own PSO)**

**CHAPTER 12**

**Night of malicity**

Sean retired to his bed three hours earlier, after having a talk with his family about what had happened in his past that allowed him to be with them.

"Sean....." Sarah said to him. "What is it?" he asked.

"Where are you? I can't see you." She said, looking straight past him. He was in her houses kitchen. He looked at himself, he had decided to reveil his secret to her before he had gone to bed. He stepped into the light, from the hallway, and she saw him, and screamed, but not at him, for she had only felt him there, and heard him in her mind, but he was not there, but something was. A shadowy form came into the room, from behind him, and the last thing he heard from her was her, calling his name, with horror in her voice.

"SEAN!!!"

He bolted upright, suddenly quite awake, and filled with dread.

He got up and felt his hands get tangled in the sheets, as well as his legs, and saw that he had his claws hooked into the sheets.

He tried to untagle himself and finally took the sheet mass around his wrists in his jaws and pulled his hands free, then pulling himself quickly out of bed.

He only had one thing on his mind, getting to Sarah. He opened his bedroom window and kicked the screen out of it. then lept out. he landed like a cat, and began to run silently across the street. He saw the kitchen window of her house was open, "Odd, normally Her father keeps tyhe house under total lockdown at night...." Sean thought, he sensed that his dream had more basis in reality than he would have liked.

He scrabbled up the wall with his claws and shot through the open window. He could see Sarah backing slwoly into the kitchen, holding her Saber before her as if to ward off an enemy he could not yet see. He saw something behind her, and he made his move, gouging into it with his clawed hands. It did not seem to like this and it spun around to face its attacker, not realizing that he hadalready climbed onto its shoulders and had a heavy pot in his hands. He brought the pot down on its head and the loud sound of metal hiting bone caused Sarah to spin toward the sound.

She caught a glimps of green and saw something flash by her, already ripping the something that had backed her into the kitchen apart.

She could somehow...fel..Sean, as if her were next to her...but she could not see him, she had felt him, and heard his voice, just before the shadowy forms came, she had given the somethings a good chase around the house, but she had finally run out of places to run. Her father was out on a mission right now, so she had the house to herself.

She finally saw what had shot past her, somekind of wild beast, looking slightly like Squall, but with greenish hair, and slightly lighter in skintone. She felt Sean again.......

He looked at her. "Behind you!" he said. She looked surprized for a second, then realized the import of his words, she spun around and stabbed her Saber into the head of a shadowy form. It desolved.

He felt other presanses close by, not hostile, at least toward them, but ready to pretty much mop the floor with these ghostly fiends.

Sarah saw another one of the nasty things, and beheaded it, well, as much as something that seemd to have no physical form yet could be hurt by physical attacks. Sean ran toward another and rammed it with his shoulder, shoving it out of the room and out the front door. David suddenly arrived, waiving a staff around and letting loose bolts of Gizonde, frying several of the ghost with it. He looked at the animalish creature with surpirze, and even more surprize came to him when he saw it carve into the ghostly form of another hostile thing.

Sean moved with speed toward another ghost and light it up with a casting of Grants that blew it away.

David saw the uber-Grants and knew who the alien fighting along side them was.

He just....knew....and so did Sarah....neither knew how, or why....but they knew.

The three of them fought on, joined around five AM by ZERO.

By the time the battle was over, all of the ghosts that had survived had fled. David was asleep on Sarahs couch. ZERO was sitting guard on the roof, with a beam rifle to keep away any more ghosts that might show up.

Sarah sat next to Sean, on a bench on her houses front porch, watching the sun rise over the city.

She looked at him, looking him over.

"Is it really....you?" She began to ask.

"Yes." He said.

He looked at her, his eyes looking with hers.

David came out about ten minutes later, finding them still looking at eachother.

"Wierd....." He said, leaning against the wall. A grin came to his face, before he did a doubletake.

He dropped the cup of coffee he had made. He saw for the first time that Sean was not Human.

"WHA-!?"

Both of them turned to see him standing, sputtering. "Yes.....your eyes do not lie to you, it IS me." Sean told him.

"What happened to you? There is obviously something going on here that I did not know about." David said.

Sean sighed, then told them both the whole story of everything he had been told from the previous day.

They sat on the bench, Sean had gotten up from it to let David sit, and so Sean could pace around for a bit.

"Thats pretty much all I know, so far......I was planning on breaking this to you both a bit slower than this, but now that the situation has clearly changed, I felt I should just get it done now." Sean said. ZERO had overheard the conversation. She dropped down from the roof and looked at him. "Now.....what is our next move?" Sarah asked.

Sean looked toward the planet.....

"We're going down there.....there has been no contact from Sqaull since he want to the planet, right ZERO?" Sean asked her.

"Correct." ZERO told them.


	13. The Wrath of Dark Force

**(This unit does not own PSO)**

**CHAPTER 13**

**The Wrath of Dark Force**

The Pioneer 2 shook violently, without warning.

Alarms began ringing throughout the ship.

On the main command deck....

"Sir! Something is coming from the surface!"

"Put it on visual!"

A horrid thing of evil rose from the planet, and began to open fire on Pioneer 2.

Meanwhile, in the residential sections....

"What the hell is that!?" Sarah said, pointing at a horrid thing that could be seen just above the residential sections of the ship. It pressed against the transparisteel plating over the upper side of the ship, then phased through it, entering the ship.

"I have a bad feeling about this..." David said.

"Dark Falz." ZERO said.

"Sean?" Sarah asked, seeing a flash of green light from beside them...she turned toward it and saw that Sean was not there.

He had already made it to where he had hidden something given to him by Squall....Squall's old Virtuaroid, from during the Madness War.

Sarah, David and ZERO heard a rumbling and turned to face the source, and saw a blue and white humanoid mech rise from an old warehouse.

"Time to see if it still works........Temjin, combat systems, activate!" Sean told the computer. "Roger that. Combat systems fully operational." The computer replyed.

Sean put on his headset, linking his mind to the VR.

He charged at Dark Falz.

In the city....

Temjin, piloted by Sean, arrived and stood defiantly before Dark Falz.

It roared a gruesome and horrific sound at him, as if chalanging him for domanance.

"Shut it, freak." he said to it and shot at it with his beam rifle. The shots hit it and punched through its armor, coming out of it through the other side.

It bellowed loudly at him and hit him with what could only be described as a casting of some souped up Rafoie, knocking him over.

He brought Temjin back up, leaning on an office building for support.

Dark Falz had already turned toward a school, thinking it had taken Temjin out. "Don't even.....THINK ABOUT IT!!!" Sean roared at Dark Falz and hit it with the SwordRifle he carried.

It did not seem to like this and whirled about to face him again. It swung a massive claw at him and knocked him into the Sentinel Electronics building that he was next to.

"Don't do that again...." Sean told it.

His SwordRifle split and the back end braced against his VRs shoulders. He crouched, and aimed the weapon at Dark Falz, who had already begun to close in on the school it had taken an interest in. "Freeessshhhh meeeaaaattttt....." it hissed.

Sean took no more time to aim, he knew the shot would hit.

He fired, a massive beam lancing out at Dark Falz. The beam gouged into its hide and burned all the way through.

It spun about to glare at Temjin. It semed to remeber that VR suddenly, and it morphed.....

It now resemballed some kind of imitation of Olga Flow now. It charged at him, brandishing its own SwordRifle as if to him him with it.....

"Aw dangit....I didn't want ta have to do this, but you have left me with no other choice!" Sean told Dark Falz.

He charged at it as well, and the two titans collided in the middle of an intersection in the city itself, they were now nolonger in the outskirts, but in the middle of the city. "I'm going to have to be careful around here, they did not make this place for VR fights..." Sean told himself. Dark Falz swung the blade at him, he ducked and the blade whent over him and imbeded itself in a Macy's. Sean took this as an opportunity, and impaled his own weapon into its chest, and fired.

Dark Falz exploded, showering the city with nasty chunks of wet muck....

Soon, within seconds of this, the hunks of wet nasty formed into various creatures found in the ruins.

Crowds of people fled from an office after Delsabers began to rampage through it.

Dark Belras began overturning cars.

Dimenians ran amok in the streets, maiming and destroying at their own amusement.

"I knew we shouldn't have let Squall give you his old VR..." A voice came on Temjin's comline.

His mother's voice. Sean looked and saw his mother going crazy with magic, while his aunt was triggerhappy with her various weapons, of which, she had four she was using, all on a jury-rigged harnes , with two at her waist, and two on her arms, set to fire at her command. They wern't known as the Demolition team for nothing, after all. Sean saw Sarah's father come in behind Sean's family, and the man was leading a large platoon of powersuited soldeirs, armmounted cannons firing at any foul thing that so much as twitched.

Sarah and David were with ZERO, who in turn had joined up with Dr. Montague and Elenor.

Sean saw another Dark Falz melt into the ship......"ANOTHER DARK FALZ!?!?"

Before he could get close enough to do anything to it, it had already reached the command tower, and destroyed it.

The ship began to lose control, without the pilots of the ship, which were on the command deck.

Pioneer 2 began to plunge toward Ragol, picking up speed as it fell, unstoppable, into the gravity well of the planet.


	14. The end? Oris it a new beginning?

**(This unit does not own PSO)**

**CHAPTER 14**

**The end? Or...it it a new beginning?**

the newly arrived Dark Falz faded into a mist and disappeared, the evil creatures the other Falz had spawned upon its destruction also vanishing.

Sean hooked the SwordRifle to the back of Temjin, then ducked down and scooped up his family in one hand, and his friends in the other, and braced his VR for the impact he knew would be coming.

The could see people running in terror for shelters. He could see the planet rush up to greet the ship.

The next few minutes were a wild ride of terror to the extreme.

Sean Could see the ship break the wall of atmosphere and rush up to an unnamed ocean, the ship plunged into the sea, and vanished beneath the waves.

Something about the way the nose of the ship was shaped caused the Pioneer 2 to slowly level with the planet, causing the ship to slowly lose momentum and eventually float to the surface of the ocean.

Sean opened his cockpit and opened the hands of his VR, to let them out, and himself in the proccess. "You all ok there?" he asked his family and friends. Several various gestures and verbal confirmations resulted, signifing that they were ok.

"I have to check something real quick, I will be right back." He told them all, setting them down on a nearby buildings flat roof, then walking toward the ruin of the command tower.

As he got to the tower, he could see what was left of the command staff....he got out of his VR and ran to the Principal of Pioneer 2.

The man was pinned beneath a large metal bar, and was hurt badly, the others never even lasted to see the crash of the Pioneer 2. However, the Pricipal's pulse was very faint, as Sean found out when he checked. The man looked up at him, the broken shell of Tyrel looking at him with lost and sadened eyes. "I never even got to see her again....Rico..." He said before he went limp. Sean checked for a pulse again and found that Tyrel was unconcious. "Why...why did this have to happen? Dark Force......I will destroy you for what you have done to the people of Pioneer 1 AND 2!" Sean vowed.

He grasped the unconcious form of Tyrel and carried it into his VR, then sat on the downfolded hatch and walked his Temjin back to where some of the survivors had gathered, with his family and friends.....

Hours later.........

The Command infastructure was discovered to have ben pretty much totaled by the attacks, and the susequent crash of Pioneer 2.

Somewhere on Gal-Da-Val Island, within a mile of the crash site of Pioneer 2....

Squall and Adus watched in shock as Pioneer 2 came rocketing through the sky, and plunged into the sea.

They watched with some relief as the ship bobed to the suface again. "What the hell happened?" Squall said, to no one in particular.

Somewhere, in a deadzone....

Rico Tyrel watched as her father's ship, his dream, crashed into the sea. What hurt most was that she could do NOTHING to help them....the others of Pioneer 1 watched helplessly as their families and friends aboard Pioneer 2 fell from the sky.

Heathcliff Flowen watched the ship fall, at Rico's side the entire time. She looked away, and he put a hand on her shoulder. "They will be alright. They HAVE to be." He told her, in his grave and formal voice.

The people of Pioneer 1 had watched helplessly as Rico had fought Dalk Falz, and watched as she had been thrown into this place with them, they had watched as four Hunters came and fought Dark Falz, defeating it, but not realizing that they had only killed ONE. Something worse lurked within the core of Ragol itself, waiting....

They had watched as those four Hunters then fought the infested form of Flowen himself, and watched as he was sealed within the deadzone where they were as well.

The people of Pioneer 1 had endured much, during the last 30-odd years of their time on Ragol.

They were wearly of being trapped in a place where they could not even die, the only escape route that they could see....and even that was beyond them. Noone had aged a milisecond beyond their physical age after ending up in this accurssed place.

Rico knew that there was one out there that could release them....she had been watching this one for some time now. The one thing they could do was watch...and she had been watching VERY closely.....


	15. Unity

**(This unit does not own PSO)**

**CHAPTER 15**

**Unity**

Sean and several others, including his parents and Sarah and David, volenteered to investigate the island that Pioneer 2 was drifting toward.

Most systems aboard Pioneer 2 had failed, including all telportation stations and life suport systems.

Sean, as he rode the boat that would take them to the island, thought about the events of the past day.

The colonists had gotten their wish, they were finally on Ragol....soon to be solid ground if the island was deemed to be safe.

He was busy reflecting when a Ranger spotted two male Hunters on shore, waving them to them. Crates of supplies could be seen gathered by the two Hunters and ready for use, along with tents and even a medical station, already within a quickly erected sterility field.

As they got closer, others could be seen milling about....including the members of the mysterious group called Arkz, that had resisted a corrupt Principal that had later been overthrown, an occurance that resulted in Tyrel being reinstated as Principal of Pioneer 2, a post now moot. Tyrel had come with the recon team, saying that it was his responsibility to lead, even if he had failed the people of Pioneer 2 once, he had vowed to never do so again. He was currently in no shape for a battle however, with various medical devices connected to him, such as a resporator, that made him sound like a character from a movie Sean had seen once. The Ranger who had spotted he people on the shore before announced that she had identified the two, as Squall and Adus. Several cheers rose from the assembled crowd of Hunters.

Soon, the boat reached the shore, and several Arkz members came and pulled the boat onto the sandy beach.

"Welcome to Gal-Da-Val Island." Squall greeted them all as they disembarked from their landing craft.

The first thing they did was administer medical aid to Tyrel, who had not seen a working, fully equiped med-facility in 28 hours. Several messangers were sent bact to Pioneer 2 with Arkz medical personale, to help take care of the wounded aboard the ship.

A red haired Arkz agent, and ex-Hunter, apporached them.

"Ahh....The Demolition Squad. Nice to see you two again!" The man greeted Sean's parents. "Nice to see that you are doing well, Endu. How have you been?" Sean's mother asked him. "Pretty good, Breaks been getting along as usual, and Lura is currently getting an upgrade for her targeting systems, so she coulnd't make it today." Endu told her.

Sean's aunt came up to him, after getting a snack from the buffet table that had been set up for them. She handed Sean and her sister some food. "Thanks." Sean said.

"Any word on activity in the Ruins?" Sean's aunt asked Endu. "Nope....no word as of yet....I do have a little tidbit of info for you guys....Ever since the Seabed facility had been cleared out, there has been....unusual...activity down there...especially in the lower levels." Endu told them. He saw Sean. "Ah....the one who was found on this planet! He still has-" Endu began before being interupted by Squall who was in turn interupted by Sean. "Yes...it is me, Endu, is it? Squall, I already found out, no need for secrecy any more." He said to them both. Endu nodded sagely, confirming that it was his name. Squall just looked confused for a second, then realized what must have happened aboard the ship earlier.

Sean and Endu spoke for a few minutes, Sarah and Squall discussed combat strategies, and David hung out with a spooky looking Force with brown hair and a headband who was polishing a Katana, getting a lesson on the history of the Arkz organisation.

ZERO had remain aboard Pioneer 2 to hel with the rescue operations still going on in the residential areas.

General Aerodyne had proved to be not so much of a bad guy in the end and sent the last of their Metroid Series to assist ZERO in the rescues.

Dr. Montague and Elenor were helping to repair the medical facilities, and when Arkz docors arrived, the task was completed in half the estimated time.

Soon, the ship had been hauled to shore and brought onto the island, carried by several hundred Virtuaroids, all Raidens, the only type aoard the ship with enough physical strength to carry out such a task.

Months passed, and then a year.

The people of Pioneer 2 found a home at last on Ragol.

However.....

One day, an incident occured, when a reaserch team was sent into the old Seabed facility of Gal-Da-Val.

The team encountered shadowy forms that had attacked them, killing haf of the team and pursuing the survivors until they had fled the facility entirely.

Soon after, instances of shaodwy forms moving about at night were reported to security, by the colonists.

Eventually, there were disappearances, and an investigation was launched. It was soon discovered that the organisms known as SHADOW, creatures that had first made an appearance during the Madness War, had resurfaced. These SHADOW had been capturing colonists, Hunters and soldiers alike, taking them somewhere.

The investigation continued, and turned up nothing.

The Hunters, Tiring of losing members at an insane rate and williung to go out on their own to investigate, since the government was having no luck, they arranged an investigation council, and most of the top Hunters still remaining joined. Sean soon gathered the nerve to sign up, and Sarah and David did the same. As they had now finished with their apprenticeship, they no longer had to train to be Hunters, they WERE Hunters now.

They were given the option of joining an exisiting team of investigators, or to crate their own team, they decided to make their own.

They still needed a name, and after much discussion, they decided finally on "Timberwolf" as the name.

They just needed an assignment, which would come sooner than they thought.


End file.
